


Beads

by resurrectionmercy



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Post-Canon, Short & Sweet, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 12:39:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15340050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/resurrectionmercy/pseuds/resurrectionmercy
Summary: It's so fucking hot. The weather. The building. All of it.





	Beads

**Author's Note:**

> Look. I'm sad and the world is bad but [this Tumblr post](http://aceluz.tumblr.com/post/175231638093) was pure so I wrote a story to it. Sorry, OP.

 

* * *

 

  


 

* * *

 

Summer, 2039. Uncharacteristically hot, even by modern standards. It seems that even the walls are weeping, melting like the weather’s just about enough to bring down the glass and the steel frames, to finally break apart the brick and burn the whole city down - but that’s just a distant hope, a nagging longing for some abstract relief from the heat.

Hank’s had better days. He’s had days, say, where every goddamn fucking bottle he brought out of the cold wasn’t only cold by description. When he wouldn’t sit down with one and touch it three seconds later to open it, and all that refreshing coolness of the contents had bled out into the surrounding atmosphere, like the damn room was as parched and desperate for relief as he was. So, the drinks are warm. The room is hot. Outdoors is unbearable. At least the car is good, but he can’t sit an entire day cooped up in a fucking cruiser. So he’s here now, back in an office where the A/C can’t even begin to fight the sunlight, and neither can the frosted windows.

 _Frosted._  What a fucking joke.

“What do you want?” he asks, voice a rough grunt as he pushes back the papers that Connor pushes towards him, making space for his android ass on the corner of the desk. “If you want to talk, I suggest you wait until I’ve had the guts to drink some coffee. So after the sun switches sides. Give it four hours or so.”

The android lets out a quiet chuckle.  
“The sun will stop bothering you in two hours and thirteen minutes, give or take.”

“Well, I suggest you wait for two hours and thirteen minutes then. All the same to me, I won’t make it. I’ll be dead in fifteen.  _Give or take._ ”

He’s not supposed to have a water bottle on the desk. Neither are twenty, twenty-five other people in the building. They could probably blame the damage done by spilled liquids on just the world melting, should the need arise. Hank’s fingers slide through the condensation on the bottle, his eyes firmly upon the trail he’s making.

“Are you just gonna sit there or did you have something to say?” he finally continues, bouncing a part-frustrated, part-amused glance at the other.

Connor straightens up, shifting towards him; the tip of his shoe touches the floor and the other digs hesitantly into his calf.

“No. Nothing, really.”

“So you came to sit on my desk for nothing, really,” Hank summarizes.  
He uncaps the bottle, drinks a mouthful; it feels the same temperature with his insides, or maybe two degrees below if he gets  _real_  optimistic about it.

“I’ve had plenty of idle time lately. I’ve spent it calibrating, when nothing else has come up.”

“Ok. So you’re bored. You want me to throw you a ball to fetch or something?”

“No.”

From the corner of his eyes, Hank sees Connor move his hand - his fist, more like, until it slowly ends up above the pile of paper they’ve pinballed back and forth on the desk.

“I wanted to try something new. Something that requires the usage of multiple systems at once, and a little bit of creativity to keep me ready for whenever we get assigned a new investigation.”

Hank cocks his brow, leans back in his chair and spins to face the android.  
“Uh-huh,” he says.  
That’s all.

“So,” Connor continues, as unfazed by his lack of enthusiasm or as keen-eyed to the pretense in his disinterest as usual, “I made this, and since we are friends and partners, I thought that perhaps you’d like to have it.”

He opens his fist, and from it, a string of stained wooden beads falls on the papers. Hank’s eyes turn for it slowly and it takes him a godawfully long time to comprehend what he’s seeing. Then, his gaze bounces back to Connor, his brow lifting ever so further upwards, the crease at its base deepening.

“Look, I’m - not really a jewelry person,” he says, the words coming out like a choked little bark from an elderly dog.

Connor’s got that stupidly sincere expression again, the one that makes him look like the puppy to Hank’s old mutt. His hand moves down towards the bracelet again, fingertips just barely brushing against it.

“You don’t have t-”

Hank swishes his hand away. Growls to cut off the words. Swings his free hand.

“Nah, back  _off_ , you already gave it to me. I’ll keep it, goddamnit.”

A small smile crosses Connor’s lips as he pulls his hand back. He nods, sliding back on his feet from the desk.

“As you wish, Lieutenant. I’ll leave you to your work, then.”

“Yeah, you better,” Hank mutters, his body slowly sliding down in the chair again.  
His eyes are fixed on the gift even as Connor’s shape moves out of his field of vision, and once he’s gone, the man pulls himself up and grabs the bracelet.

He’s got no fucking clue where the android found the beads. Probably somehow traded them off the woman who’s always knitting or crafting cards in the cafeteria, whatever the hell her name was. They’re real wood, too; they’ve got this earthy scent about them that’s part the varnish and part some inherent musk of the wood itself. None of that 3D printed nonsense most craft stores would sell now in the name of green living. No, someone cut down a tree for these.

He runs his fingers over them once, twice; there’s a pleasantly resistant smoothness to them, like petrified liquid poured over them. And they’re perfectly organized, with the smallest of size differences taken in account - normally, he wouldn’t even notice the fact that the beads aren’t all the same size, but this fucking android put them together so that they grow bigger on the sides and smaller in the middle. Nothing a human could do for sure.

It doesn’t bother him now. In fact, it’s… beautiful; that perfect harmony of sizes and shapes moving from one to the other and back again.

He slips the bracelet around his wrist, closes his eyes and breathes in deep before reaching for his bottle again.

 _Friends and partners_ , he thinks, eyes drawing back to the beads as he drinks. Next thing he knows, they’ll be wearing those split heart pendants with each other’s initials carved on the halves.

Yeah. He’s really gotta tell Connor to draw the line there or he might actually end up wearing one of those damn things, what with this Achilles’ heel he’s developed for the damn android and his antics.

This bracelet, though - it’s not gonna come off anytime soon, he feels.


End file.
